April 29, 2021, 12:28pm
Literature can speak to us. In this case, literally: Danish electronics company Bang & Olufsen has designed a new wireless speaker that resembles a book. The sleek ten-inch tall speaker fits neatly into a bookshelf and is nine hundred dollars. Finally, libraries can be noisy!
It may seem like a novelty item, but with the nine-hundred-dollar price tag I figure the aptly named Beosound Emerge has to have a lot of utility. Pursuing this line of thinking, I did a two-minute divergent thinking test (you might know this as the “uses for a brick test”) to come up with as many ways to use the Besound Emerge as I could. Here’s what I came up with:
Prank a library.
Visual “audiobook” pun.
Pair with record player that looks like pink highlighter.
Use it to play your book annotations aloud so everyone knows you’ve identified the conflict as “man vs. nature”.
Stack hundreds to form speaker shaped like tree.
Put behind glass, add plaque: meditation on nature of art.
Play shushing sounds through it. (**THIS USE IS FOR LIBRARIANS**)
Spritz with Powell’s Books’s book-scented perfume to recreate sensory experience of real book.
Good way to disguise your coolness and make sure everyone still thinks you’re a nerd.
Exchange for nine hundred dollars.
Drop on ground in your school hallway to attract attention of handsome Ableton producer.
Paperweight.